The study and practice of contemporary movement vocabularies, including regional dance forms, contact improvisation and various modern dance techniques. Objectives include the intellectual and physical introduction to this discipline as well as increased body awareness, alignment, flexibility, coordination, strength, musical phrasing and the expressive potential of movement. The course material is presented at the intermediate/advanced level.  A half course.  Because the specific genres and techniques will vary from semester to semester, the course may be repeated for credit.

The study and practice of contemporary movement vocabularies, including regional dance forms, contact improvisation and various modern dance techniques. Because the specific genres and techniques will vary from semester to semester, the course may be repeated for credit. Objectives include the intellectual and physical introduction to this discipline as well as increased body awareness, alignment, flexibility, coordination, strength, musical phrasing and the expressive potential of movement. The course material is presented at the beginning/intermediate level.

A beginning studio course in the development of voice for speaking. Students develop range and tone through regular physical exercises in relaxation, breathing technique, placement, and presence. Individual attention focuses on helping each student develop the physical, mental, and emotional self-awareness needed for expressive vocal production.

The study and practice of contemporary movement vocabularies, including regional dance forms, contact improvisation and various modern dance techniques. Objectives include the intellectual and physical introduction to this discipline as well as increased body awareness, alignment, flexibility, coordination, strength, musical phrasing and the expressive potential of movement. The course material is presented at the beginning/intermediate level. A half course.  Because the specific genres and techniques will vary from semester to semester, the course may be repeated for credit.

This course examines what happens on stage (‘action’) and ‘how’ that action happens (the character) from the points of view of  both the playwright and the actor.  The course assumes that the creative process of the playwright and the actor are similar.  Therefore the students will write scenes and one short play, which will be rehearsed as homework for presentation in class. A series of acting and playwriting exercises designed to assist in developing craft and giving students a feeling for the creative processes are presented in class.

An introduction to movement as a language and to dance and performance composition. In studio sessions students will explore and expand their individual movement vocabularies by working improvisationally with weight, posture, gesture, patterns, rhythm, space, and relationship of body parts. We will ask what these vocabularies might communicate about emotion, thought, physical structures, cultural/social traditions, and aesthetic preferences.

Independent Reading Courses.

Fall and spring semester.

(Offered as SWAG 469, ASLC  452 [SA], and FAMS 322.)  How do we define the word “feminism”? Can the term be used to define cinematic texts outside the Euro-American world? In this course we will study a range of issues that have been integral to feminist theory--the body, domesticity, same sex desire, gendered constructions of the nation, feminist utopias and dystopias--through a range of South Asian cinematic texts.

This seminar explores the AIDS and Ebola epidemics in the U.S. and globally, and the role of socio-economic, political and biological factors in the shaping of the epidemics. The course encourages students to think about AIDS, Ebola and other diseases politically, while remaining attentive to their bodily and health effects. We will engage with AIDS and Ebola on various scales, from the virus and immune cells to the transnational pharmaceutical industry, and from physical human contact to the political economies of health care.

(Offered as FREN 342 and SWAG 342) Prostitutes play a central role in nineteenth-century French fiction, especially of the realistic and naturalistic kind. Both widely available and largely visible in nineteenth-century France, prostitutes inspired many negative stereotypes. But, as the very product of the culture that marginalized her, the prostitute offered an ideal vehicle for writers to criticize the hypocrisy of bourgeois mores.